posted on 10 Jan 2018

British Prints from the Machine Age: Rhythms of Modern life 1914-1939 edited by Clifford Ackley

The experience of the First World War and the growing certainty and collective fear that there would be a second seems to have made the inter-war years an extraordinary time for artists and writers across a wide spectrum of endeavour.

The work of revolutionary artists like Picasso, Braque or Matisse changed the face of modern art and ideas like Cubism, Modernism, Futurism or Vorticism were on the lips of many creative artists working in diverse mediums. The ferment of ideas in Europe had its impact on Britain too despite the fact that a very different tradition dominated here. In a significantly less flamboyant and considerably more understated way, British art too underwent a sizable upheaval and its impact can be felt in the somewhat overshadowed world of printmaking.

This book seeks to throw a much more substantial spotlight on what happened in these exciting and creative years to a branch of public art that hasn’t necessarily been showcased before and to give due acknowledgement to artists such as Cyril Power, Claude Flight, Sybil Andrews and Edward Wadsworth whose work is often forgotten or goes past without recognition.

This is a quite stunning collection of lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and linocuts, with subjects ranging from geometric abstractions to depictions of a war that has claim to be the first fully mechanized conflict ever. The impact of World War One on the subject matter of the prints and the psychology of the printmakers really can’t be overstated. But it’s not all about conflict and death – there are exuberant and colourful Jazz Age images of sports, speed trials, and other leisure activities that brightened life up for the post First World War generation.

Again it is machines that figure boldly – bicycles, motor cars, motor cycles all seen throwing shapes, cutting through space in extraordinary ways. Always a sense of movement, always a fizz of excitement. There are prints here that even turn the humble umbrella into an object of design and desire as they battle against the rain to keep their hunched owners dry.

Writing in his review for The Independent in 2009, Christopher Hirst says of the prints on display here:

Claude Flight's linocut of duelling racing cars at Brooklands (1929) might be a cover illustration for Waugh's Vile Bodies, published in the following year. Cyril E Powers's 1934 linocut The Tube Train combines observational realism with stylisation. In an essay, Samantha Rippner suggests that "human beings have become mere robots", but this might also apply to Powers' mechanistic Thames rowers in The Eight (1930). After 80 years, these works are still modern.

The book is edited by Clifford S. Ackley’s and his introduction provides a really useful insight into the background and, importantly for me at least given that I know nothing about it, an overview of the history and technique of the modern linocut. There are also some quite short but still very valuable pen portraits of the main artists and again these provided some detail that I haven’t come across before and showcases artists I’ve personally never encountered outside this book.

What is interesting too, I think, is the way that the work of some of these artists has finally begun to find its way into the mainstream. I was recently browsing through a selection of greetings cards in an upmarket shop in Oxford and came across a pretty big selection of images that come directly from the prints included in this book. I know people will have different views about the desirability of art being reduced to greeting card level but actually, in the case of prints like this, it seems entirely appropriate – especially as many were produced in the first place to grace public information posters.

This book is a visual treat and I’m sure there will be stuff in here that you’ve never seen before – it would be well worth the £10 or so you’d need to invest to get a copy.

 

Terry Potter

January 2018